Chapter Text
I
Smoke filled the train station, its clear greyness turning the summer air damp and lethargic. Vera Claythorne stood in a queue to board the train, while two security guards were checking the documents of anyone due to board the train heading to Devon. Her daemon clung to her blouse, his tiny hands grabbing the fabric, as he peeked over her shoulder, observing as the guards — Scotland Yard fellows by the look of them — thoroughly checked documents and tickets.
“It’s the war.” The man in front of them said to his companion, an elderly man with a crow daemon. They nodded. “They’re all afraid of them Church people infiltrating the city.”
There was no war yet, Vera knew, but the tension growing overseas as Geneva tried to blockade all trade coming and going through England was enough to set the country’s alarm. Scotland Yard was spread thin, guarding all major transportation methods, docks and the like, and all trains were checked by guards before leaving any main stations. It was all over the newspapers, alongside the clash in politics about how certain MPs were interested in yielding to the Swiss. The military was vastly unhappy; there was a terror case too, but Vera had skipped that.
There was only so much horror she could withstand.
The queue finally moved, and Vera took a step forward. In front of the men ahead of her, there was another man, in his 40s, wearing a thin moustache. He looked around anxiously before approaching the policemen, who took a quick glance at his identification and quickly sent him on his way to the train. Vera thought that was odd, if only for a moment, before her mind was emptied of thoughts once again.
Her daemon clung tighter to her clothes but he didn’t say anything. She knew he was thinking it though; that she was being more observant, paying more attention to her surroundings, making sure she was not slouching in her new outfit.
The advancement paid by her new employers had covered her rent, food and the train ticket, as well as the new travelling outfit she had bought and a dress for a dinner party. She didn’t own any good clothes, but it had been implied the Owens were well off and as their new secretary, she was required to look presentable.
“Miss.” One of the policemen nodded at her while she handed him her identification and ticket. Unlike the other man, they took their time inspecting her credentials.
There was nothing to find, of course, she was a mere games mistress, going to the Devon coast so she could do a summer job as a secretary, to make up the rent during the vacation period. In her plainness, Vera Claythorne exuded an energy of boredom that made all the eyes that would normally be set on a good-looking young woman, to look past her. It gave her comfort, safety.
“You can go, miss.” The man returned her documents and rushed her forward. “Safe travels.”
She picked up her suitcase, with her very few things, and boarded the train.
II
“Vera, someone is watching us!” Her daemon whispered, hastily, his voice like a sharp needle on the back of her head.
She had just woken up after falling asleep to the rhythmic thumping of the moving train, green and yellow blurred imagery outside her window. Vera shook her head and her daemon got off her shoulder, sitting on the table in front of her.
Her eyes barely moved before she found the man watching her. In his thirties, he had an air about him of quiet danger and eager amusement, his cigarette hanging from his lips, his dark eyes stuck on her. It was an act of deliberate examination, meticulous and precise.
It didn’t immediately make her uncomfortable, so much as it created a sense of caution in her. She met his eyes with wariness, and realised his daemon was lying at his feet, a big, black panther whose fur glistened purply under the cool sunlight coming from the window.
“Your skirt.” Her daemon chastised, quietly, and she lowered her eyes to her clothes, finding half her stocking and garter exposed, probably having moved while she was asleep. In a quick movement, she adjusted her clothes and gave him a reproachful glance that would have made most men at least feign some embarrassment, but not him.
The man merely grinned, and Vera felt her instincts come into play. Run, her daemon thought, and she obeyed because she had to. She felt compelled to make up to him, a needless urge to comply with his every request, even if she didn’t always agree. Orpheus was wiser than she was, that much they had agreed on, and he resented her for her ways, as he liked to call it.
The man’s daemon raised her head slowly, and her eyes met Vera’s. She immediately felt the discomfort of being measured in a way that wasn’t quite lustful, but it had a borderline indecency to it. She had experienced it before, many times in a time not long gone, and she detested it now more than ever.
In a quick and efficient movement, Vera stood up and picked her small suitcase up, ready to leave. She walked away from her seat, glancing back, for a fleeting moment, at the man, who laughed at her attitude.
“Ignore him.” Her daemon whispered, clinging to her shoulder as she made her way as far as she could from that devil.
Usually, Orpheus’s advice was good. Ignoring men who tried to engage her worked wonders, most of the time, and Vera could be rather unpleasant if that didn’t work. Men never wanted to put in the effort, so if she made herself unworthy of their time, they gave up. She couldn’t have known how badly that would have failed against the man who had been sitting across her.
She also couldn’t have known that, but he and his daemon had shared a single thought before forgetting all about her for the next hour or so. So prude, they mocked.
III
Detective Inspector Blore did not mind the girl who passed him by his spot on the train. He was recounting his thoughts to himself, as his daemon — a black poodle — lied lazily at his feet.
“Eight guests, myself included.” He mumbled, fumbling with his cigarette between his fingers, unsure. There was a swift breeze coming in from the open window, and Blore fixed his hat. “Plus the servants. Rogers, I think.”
“Husband and wife.” His daemon said lazily, and he hummed in agreement. He picked the little notebook from his chest pocket, and with a small pencil he made a note in front of Rogers’ names.
“In my experience, it’s always the servants.” He said mindlessly, making notes in front of the names of his guest list.
“In your experience, the less work you do, the better.” His daemon said snippy.
Blore ignored her, indignant, putting his notebook away. He had easily slipped through the security at the train station, showing them his Scotland Yard credentials; he was mighty glad he didn’t have to be on security duty himself, given the state of the country.
In his opinion, the worst part was the rumours. The police could handle the protesters and the faithful and the in-between, but the rumours weren’t tangible; they mentioned disappearances in the dead of the night, tortured men and women brainwashed and sent back to the streets to preach. Politicians kept changing their mind, going back and forth as Geneva prepared to invade the islands, while the Welsh and the Scottish had decided that now was a good time to demand trade freedom. A mess didn’t begin to describe it.
So when he got the letter from Mr. Owen, requesting his assistance in a delicate matter, Blore didn’t think twice. He was used to handling gangsters and hard lived criminals, but the dogmatic bullshit that was this cold and silent conflict was something that unnerved him deeply. A week in Soldier Island would do him good, he thought.
The Office could afford to do without him for a week. The war wasn’t going anywhere.
IV
“Crazy, I tell you!” A well-dressed man was talking to an elderly man by the dock, holding their hats against the wind coming from the sea. “No respect for traffic laws whatsoever! Drove me off the road, he did!”
The scent made Vera dizzy, but she tightened her grip on her suitcase, and walked towards the men, since a third man was waiting by the boat, holding a sign that said Soldier Island . Her marmoset daemon held to her back, unobtrusive; Vera’s short heels — not high quality either, since her payment wasn’t enough to afford all that — struggling against the stone floor.
“Well, I assume you’re off to the island as well, Miss—” The elderly man greeted Vera, who forced a smile.
“Claythorne. Yes, I suppose so. I’m Mrs. Owen’s secretary.”
There was a moment of awkward silence between the three of them. At the mention of their hostess’ name, the two men exchanged quick glances. They didn’t bother questioning her, however; common sense dictated that staff had good gossip that never reached other people in direct ways.
Once her suitcase was handed to the sailor with the sign, who introduced himself as Fred Narracott, the wind blew as a wave crashed against the shore, and sent Vera’s hat away. She made a shy attempt to pick it up, and so did her daemon, but neither of them reached it in time.
She tried to see where it went, and it hadn’t been far. Her turning on her heels matched the quick catch of the man from the train, with the black panther; his daemon did a steady, elegant hop and fetched the hat from the air as easily as if it had been a small bird. Vera’s lips tightened when the man approached her and handed her the hat, not saying a word. She mimicked him, nodding as a gesture of gratitude, but his demeanour, albeit quiet, was rather malicious. She couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, but she felt the weight of his gaze nonetheless.
The elderly man, General MacArthur as he had introduced himself, nodded cheerfully at their arrival. He seemed to live close to the coast, so he had arrived early whereas their train had been delayed a good half hour.
“Scotland Yard is being thorough, with all these protests by the faithful.” Justice Wargrave said, his butterfly daemon, beautiful and shimmery even in the sunny day, resting on his shoulder. He had been in the cabin with Vera for the rest of her journey after she moved places. Both the doctor and the general seemed to recognise him, and if Vera had been paying attention, she would have noticed that the man called Davis seemed to know him too, although the judge didn’t show any signs of recognising anyone but the general. She had only recognised Davis as the man who had easily walked past security back at their train station.
Old men always know other old men, her daemon thought, and that made her restless. The sea scent was enough of a discomfort, her mind drowned in memories, most of which she would have preferred not to recall at all.
“Too much fuss, if you ask me.” Davis said, his black poodle lying lazily at his feet. He has an unusual accent, Vera thought, like Aotearoan perhaps, but as Orpheus bitterly reminded her, she didn’t know anyone from Aotearoa to actually know that. “I bet there is nothing to worry about.”
None of them knew this, but he didn’t actually believe that. However, they all looked at him with discomfort; anyone who could read knew there was plenty to worry about, inside and outside of Brytain. One had to simply look around, frankly, Vera thought. Even she, in her world of daydream and mindlessness, knew that.
As Narracott prepared the boat for departure, carefully loading the new baggage onto it, the men got caught up discussing the state of things. Vera was tired of that subject, everywhere and nowhere at once, and she noticed no one seemed to have asked the man with the panther for his name.
True, they were all caught up in Wargrave’s acknowledgment of the general and vice-versa, but a man like that was hard to ignore. It wasn’t deliberate, of course, but deep down there was a hint of avoidance or so Vera felt. It was natural to her, he was the kind of man who would have made her change places on the sidewalk to avoid him.
He didn’t seem troubled, dressed in expensive but unusual clothes, tinted vibrantly in dark blue opposing the earthy colours of the general, the judge and the foreigner, and the lighter clothes of the doctor. Up close, she realised he was too sunburnt, which was odd.
Where have you been?, she wondered. Someplace interesting, I expect.
A man like that didn’t belong to the same world as Wargrave and the others belonged, Vera was worldly enough to recognise that on sight.
“Full of thoughts, are you, Miss Claythorne?” He said, and that startled her, because he had been facing towards the men chatting, but his eyes — behind his sunglasses — had turned to her. His daemon had warned him, through a brush on his leg, that she had been staring.
“I was thinking you didn’t introduce yourself, mister—” Her secretarial efficiency was showing, despite the fact she had little experience in that role.
He turned his face at her, half a grin on his lips, perhaps pondering if she was worth the time and trouble. Or if she had a secret agenda lurking behind big doe eyes and an unappetizing attitude. She could have been a spy, he thought to his daemon. She isn’t, she thought back, but she could have been. England is so full of spies nowadays.
“Lombard. Philip Lombard.” He spoke lazily.
The others acknowledged his introduction, but apart from Davis, they didn’t seem to mind Lombard’s Irish accent very much. The other daemons, talking between each other or resting lazily close to their humans, were wary of his panther, though. Orpheus was twice as wary, but he didn’t show, hiding on her neck, behind her hair so neatly kept in a dark net.
She broke eye contact as soon as Narracott called out to them. The sea was agitated, despite the fact the sun was blazing the Earth. Summer had been hot that year, yet the day seemed to be getting cold, or windy, at the very least.
“I already took some of the guests there, the sea was quieter then.” Narracott said, messing with the engine while the men made their way inside. “A storm is coming, we best get going.”
Everyone looked at him with scepticism, the sun brightly turning everything vibrant and golden. His seagull daemon made a noise to heed the guests into the boat, probably used to people doubting her human’s skill. Armstrong went first, followed by Lombard and Davis, who helped Wargrave with his cane.
Vera hesitated, if only for a moment. Not because of the sea, slowly beginning to rage and move about, but because she had searched for the island in the horizon and saw nothing but the vast, endless sea. It was soothing and painful at the same time.
“Chop-chop, Miss Claythorne.” Lombard taunted her, and offered his hand to help her in.
Vera frowned, displeased, and seeing her hesitation before Lombard’s offer of help, the General offered her his own hand instead, which she took with relief. His hawk daemon perched close to the panther and whispered something Vera couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, Lombard hummed a laughter, although in reality he had been chastised for his straightforwardness.
She sat at the bow, trying to see the island, but failing.
“You can’t see it from here.” Narracott said, and when she turned, she saw Lombard had sat opposite of her, but he wasn’t watching her this time. He was observing the same thing she was. “But it’s not that far off, I promise.”
“Isn’t this boat too small?” Armstrong voiced everyone’s concern, almost politely.
Narracott laughed before starting the engine.
“Safe as houses, mister.” The waves crashed against the boat, splashing cold droplets on their faces. “Safe as houses.”